CHAPTER X
USELESSNESS OF VIOLENCE FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF EVIL. THE MORAL ADVANCE OF MANKIND IS ACCOMPLISHED, NOT ONLY THROUGH THE KNOWLEDGE OF TRUTH, BUT ALSO THROUGH THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PUBLIC OPINION
Christianity destroys the State – Which is more necessary, Christianity or the State? – There are men who defend the necessity of the State, and others who, on the same grounds, deny this necessity – Neither can be proved by abstract reasoning – The question decides the character of a man's consciousness, which either allows or forbids him to participate in the organization of the State – Realization of the uselessness and immorality of taking part in the organization of the State, which is contradictory to Christian doctrine, decides this question for each one, regardless of the destiny of the State – Argument of the defenders of the State, as a form of social life indispensable for the defense of the good from the wicked, until all nations, and all members of each nation, shall have become Christians – The more wicked are always those in power – History is but a recital of the usurpation of power by the bad over the good – The acknowledgment by authority of the necessity of struggle with evil by violence is equivalent to self-destruction – The annihilation of violence is not only possible, but is going on before our eyes – However, it is not destroyed by State violence, but through those men who, obtaining power by violence, and recognizing its vanity and futility, benefit by experience and become incapable of using violence – This is the process through which individual men, as well as whole nations, have passed – It is in that way that Christianity penetrates into the consciousness of men, and not only is this accomplished despite the violence used by authority, but through its agency, and therefore the abolition of authority is not only without danger, but it goes on continually as life itself – Objection of the defenders of the State system that the diffusion of Christianity is improbable – Diffusion of Christian truth interdicting violence accomplished not only slowly and gradually, by the internal method, by individual recognition of the truth, by prophetic intuition, by the realizing of the emptiness of power and abandonment of it by individual men, but accomplished also by the external method, by which large numbers of men, inferior in intellectual development, at once, in view of their confidence in the others, adopt the new truth – The diffusion of truth at a certain stage creates a public opinion, which compels the majority of men who have previously opposed it to recognize the new truth at once – Therefore a universal renunciation of violence may very soon come to pass; namely, when a Christian public opinion shall be established – The conviction of the necessity of violence prevents the establishment of Christian public opinion – Violence compels men to discredit the moral force which can alone exalt them – Neither nations nor individual men have been conquered by violence, but by public opinion, which no violence can resist – It is possible to conquer savage men and nations only by the diffusion of Christian public opinion among them, whereas the Christian nations, in order to conquer them, do everything in their power to destroy the establishment of a Christian public opinion – These unsuccessful experiments cannot be cited as a proof of the impossibility of conquering men by Christianity – Violence which corrupts public opinion only prevents the social organization from becoming what it should be, and with the abolition of violence Christian public opinion will be established – Whatever may take place when violence has been abolished, the unknown future can be no worse than the present, and therefore one need not fear it – To penetrate to the unknown and move toward it is the essence of life.
Christianity, faithfully interpreted, saps the foundations of the civil law, and this was always understood from the very outset. It was for this that Christ was crucified; and until men felt the necessity for justifying the establishment of the Christian state, they always accepted that interpretation. The cleverly constructed theories intended to reconcile the doctrines of Christianity with that of the State date back to the time when rulers of nations adopted a nominal external Christianity. But in these times it is impossible for a sincere and earnest man not to perceive the incompatibility of the Christian doctrine of love, meekness of spirit, and forgiveness of injuries, with the despotism, the violence, and the wars of the State. The profession of true Christianity not only forbids the recognition of the State, but strikes at its very foundations.
But if it be true that Christianity is incompatible with the State, one naturally asks which is the better adapted to promote the well-being of mankind, the system prescribed by the State, or the precepts of Christianity?
There are those who affirm that the State organization is the more indispensable; they declare that its overthrow would check all human progress, that no development is possible save through the channels of civil government, and that all those evils which we find prevailing among nations who live under State laws are not the result of the organization, which permits progress and the attainment of the highest degree of civilization.
They who hold these views quote, in support of their position, certain historical, philosophical, and even religious arguments, which seem to them irrefutable. But there are others who entertain views diametrically opposed to these. For instance, they say that the fact of the world having existed at one time without a government, might be taken to prove the State to be only a temporary condition; that the time was sure to come when men would require a change, which time had now arrived. To support their theory, these men in turn adduce historical, philosophical, and religious arguments which seem to them irrefutable.
Volumes may be and have been written in defense of the former position, and of late years a great deal has been written, and ably written too, from the opposite standpoint.
It can neither be proved on the one hand, as the partizans of the State claim, that its destruction would be followed by a general upheaval, by robberies and murders, and by the nullification of all social laws, and the return of man to a condition of barbarism; nor on the other, as the enemies of the State affirm, that man has grown so virtuous and well disposed that, preferring peace to enmity, he will no longer rob and murder his neighbor; that he is quite able, without State assistance, to establish a community, and conduct his own affairs; and that the State itself, while assuming an air of protection, is really exerting a demoralizing influence. It is impossible to prove either one or the other by abstract arguments. And naturally neither point can be proved by experience, as it is a question first of all of getting the requisite experience.
Whether or not the time has arrived for abolishing the State is a question which could not be answered were it not that we possess other means that will assist us to settle it beyond dispute.
It needs no one to tell the young birds when it is time to burst the shell; they know very well when there is no longer room for them in the eggs, and begin of their own accord to break the shell and leave it behind. So it is with this question of a change in human affairs. Has the time come for men to cast aside the customs of the State and establish a new order? When a man's inner consciousness has so developed that he feels himself hampered by the requirements of the State, and can no longer submit to the restraint, realizing at the same time that he has ceased to need its protecting care, the question whether or no men have matured sufficiently to enable them to dispense with the State is disposed of without reference to former arguments. A man who has outgrown the State can no more be coerced into submission to its laws than can the fledgling be made to reënter its shell.
"The State may have been necessary at one time, and for aught that I know it may even now serve the purposes you mention," says the man who holds the Christian life-conception. "I can only say that I have no need of it, nor can I conform to its requirements. You must decide for yourself whether it be advantageous or no. I shall not attempt to generalize on the subject with the expectation of proving my point. I only recognize what I need and what I don't need; what I can, and what I cannot do. I know, as far as I am myself concerned, that I do not need to separate from the men of other nations, and therefore I can neither recognize an exclusive affiliation to this or that one, nor acknowledge myself the subject of any one government. I need none of the institutions established by the State, and therefore I am not willing to surrender the fruits of my labor in the form of taxes to support institutions which I believe to be not only unnecessary but positively injurious. I know that I need neither magistrates, nor tribunals founded on and supported by violence, and therefore I can have nothing to do with them; I know that I feel no inclination to attack other nations and put their citizens to death, neither do I wish to defend myself against them by force of arms, and therefore I can take no part in wars nor in preparations for wars. Doubtless there are men who believe that all these things are an indispensable part of human life, – I cannot argue with them, – but I know that for me they have no meaning, and that I will have nothing to do with them.
"And this is not a matter of personal selection, but because I must obey the commands of Him who has sent me into the world, and has given me an unmistakable law by which I am to be guided through life."
Whatever arguments may be advanced to prove that harm and probably disaster will accrue from abolishing the authority of the State, the man who has already outgrown the State ideal cannot possibly be bound by it. And whatever arguments may be adduced to prove its necessity, he can never return to it. He is like the young bird who can never return to its outgrown shell.
"But granting this to be true," say the partizans of the existing order, "we cannot dispense with the supremacy of the State until all men are Christians, because even among those who claim the title there are many who are very far from being Christians – evil-doers, who seek their own gratification at the expense of their fellow-men, and if the governments were overthrown, so far from improving the condition of the people, it would greatly add to their miseries. The subversion of the State would be a misfortune, not only where the minority are true Christians, but even supposing the whole people to be so; while the neighboring nations are still non-Christian, these latter would make their lives a martyrdom by rapine and murder and all manner of violence. It would serve only to provide the vicious and unprincipled with an opportunity to oppress the innocent. Therefore the State should not be abolished until all the wicked have ceased from troubling, which will not happen just at present. Hence, however much certain individual Christians may wish to escape from the authority of the State, the greater good of the greater number demands its preservation." So say the defenders of the State principle. "If it were not," they say, "for State authority there would be no protection against the malice and injustice of the oppressor; that authority alone makes it possible to restrain the wicked."
But in uttering these sentiments the partizans of the existing order take it for granted that they have proved the truth of what they assert. When they declare that the evil-doers would ride roughshod over the defenseless and the innocent were it not for the authority of the State, they imply that the governing power is vested at the present time in a body of virtuous men, who control all the wrong-doers. But this is a proposition which must be proved. It could only be a correct statement if we happened to resemble the inhabitants of China, where it is popularly believed, although the belief is not justified by fact, that the good are always in authority, because should it become known that the rulers are no better than those over whom they rule, it is the duty of the citizens to overthrow the government. But although this is supposed to be one of the customs of China, it is not, nor would it be possible for it to be so, since, in order to overthrow a criminal government, one needs the power as well as the right. Even in China this is a mere supposition, and in our own Christian land we have never so much as dreamed of it. As far as we are concerned, there is no reason to believe that power is in the hands of the virtuous and high-minded, rather than in those of men who took it by violence and have held it for themselves and their descendants. For surely it would be impossible for a high-minded man to usurp authority by violence and to continue to hold it.
In order to gain possession of power, and to retain it, one must have a love for it, and the love of power is incompatible with goodness; it accords with the opposite qualities of pride, duplicity, and cruelty.
Both the origin and the maintenance of power depend upon the exaltation of the individual, and the degradation of the people by means of hypocrisy and fraud, by prisons, fortresses, and murders. "If State authority were to be abolished, then would the more wicked people dominate over the less wicked," say the upholders of State organization. But if the Egyptians conquered the Hebrews, and the Persians the Egyptians, and the Macedonians the Persians, and the Romans the Greeks, and the barbarians the Romans, is it really possible that the conquerors are always better than the conquered? And so with political changes in the State; is the power always transferred to the better men? When Louis XVI. was deposed, and control passed into the hands of Robespierre, and when, later, he was in turn succeeded by Napoleon, was it the better or the worse man who held the power? Again, were they of Versailles or the communists the better men? Charles the First or Cromwell? When Peter III. reigned, or, after his murder, when Catharine ruled over one part of Russia, and Pugatchov over the other – who then was good and who was wicked?
All those in authority affirm that their office is required in order that the unprincipled may be hindered from oppressing the innocent, implying thereby that they themselves, being virtuous, are protecting other virtuous men from the malice of the evil-doer. To possess power and to do violence are synonymous terms; to do violence means doing something to which the victim of violence objects, and which the aggressor would resent were it directed against himself. Therefore the possession of power really means doing unto others what we should not like if it were done to ourselves, – that is, harm.
Obedience signifies that a man holds patience to be better than violence, and to choose patience rather than violence means to be good, or, at least, not so wicked as those who do unto others what they would not wish to have done to themselves.
Therefore all the probabilities are that those in authority were in past times, as they are in present, worse men than those they ruled over. Doubtless there are wicked men among those who submit to authority, but it is impossible that the better men should rule over the worse.
This might be thought in pagan times, when the definition of goodness was inaccurate; but with the clear and exact conception of the qualities of good and evil presented by Christianity before us we cannot imagine it. If in the pagan world they who were more or less good, and they who were more or less bad, might not be easily distinguished, the characteristics of goodness and wickedness have been so clearly defined by the Christian conception that it is impossible to mistake them. According to the doctrine of Christ, the good are those who submit and are long-suffering, who do not resist evil by violence, who forgive injuries, and love their enemies; the wicked are the vainglorious, who tyrannize, who are arrogant and violent with others. Therefore, if we are guided by the doctrine of Christ, we shall have no difficulty in deciding where to seek the good and the wicked among rulers and subjects. It is even absurd to speak of Christians as sovereigns or rulers.
The non-Christians – that is, those to whom life is but a matter of temporal welfare – must always rule over the Christians, for whom life means self-denial and disregard of temporal things.
And thus it has always been, and it has been manifested more and more plainly as the Christian doctrine has become more clearly defined and widespread.
The farther true Christianity extended, the firmer the hold it gained on the consciousness of men, the less possible it became for Christians to belong to the dominant class, and the easier for non-Christians to gain the ascendancy.
"To abolish the supremacy of the State before all men have become true Christians would only afford the wicked a chance to tyrannize over the good and maltreat them with impunity," say the upholders of the existing order.
It has always been the same from the beginning of the world until this present time, and it always will be. The wicked always rule over the good and do violence to them. Cain did violence to Abel, the astute Jacob betrayed the trusting Esau, and was himself deceived by Laban; Caiaphas and Pilate sat in judgment on Christ; the Roman emperors ruled over Seneca, Epictetus, and other high-minded Romans of those times; Ivan IV. with his Opritchniks, the tipsy syphilitic Peter with his clowns, the prostitute Catharine with her lovers, ruled over the industrious, God-fearing Russian people of those times, and trampled upon them. William rules the Germans, Stambulov the Bulgarians, and the Russian officials rule over the Russian people; the Germans ruled over the Italians, and now they rule over the Hungarians and the Slavs. The Turks ruled over the Greeks and now rule over the Slavs, the English over the Hindoos, the Mongolians over the Chinese.
So we see that whether the tyranny of the State is or is not to be abolished, the position of the innocent, who are oppressed by the tyrants, will not be materially affected thereby.
Men are not to be frightened by being told that the wicked will oppress the good, because that is the natural course, and will never change.
The whole of pagan history is a mere narrative of events wherein the wicked have got the upper hand, and, once in power, by craft and cruelty have kept their hold upon men, announcing themselves meanwhile as the guardians of justice and the defenders of the innocent against the oppressor. All revolutions are but the result of the appropriation of power by the wicked and their rule over the good. When the rulers say that if their power were to be destroyed the evil-doers would tyrannize over the innocent, what they really mean is that the tyrants in power are reluctant to yield to those other tyrants who would fain wrest from them their authority. When they protest that this authority of theirs, which is actually violence, is necessary to defend the people against the possible tyranny of others,20 they are simply denouncing themselves. The reason why violence is dangerous is that, whenever it is employed, all the arguments which the perpetrators advanced in their own defense may be used against them with even greater force. They talk of the violence done in the past, and more frequently of future and imaginary violence, while they themselves are the real offenders. "You say that men committed robbery and murder in former times, and profess anxiety lest all men be robbed or murdered unless protected by your authority. This may or may not be true, but the fact that you allow thousands of men to perish in prisons by enforced labor, in fortresses, and in exile, that your military requisitions ruin millions of families and imperil, morally and physically, millions of men, this is not a supposititious but an actual violence, which, according to your own reasoning, should be resisted by violence. And therefore, by your own admission, the wicked ones, against whom one should use violence, are yourselves." Thus should the oppressed reply to their oppressors. And such are the language, the thoughts, and the actions of non-Christians. Wherever the oppressed are more wicked than the oppressor, they attack and overthrow them whenever they are able; or else – and this is more frequently the case – they enter the ranks of the oppressors and take part in their tyranny.
Thus the dangers of which the defenders of State rights make a bugbear – that if authority were overthrown the wicked would prevail over the good – potentially exist at all times. The destruction of State violence, in fact, never can, for this very reason, lead to any real increase of violence on the part of the wicked over the good.
If State violence disappeared, it is not unlikely that other acts of violence would be committed; but the sum of violence can never be increased simply because the power passes from the hands of one into those of another.
"State violence can never be abolished until all the wicked disappear," say the advocates of the existing order, by which they imply that there must always be violence, because there will always be wicked people. This could only prove true, supposing the oppressors to be really beneficent, and supposing the true deliverance of mankind from evil must be accomplished by violence. Then, of course, violence could never cease. But as, on the contrary, violence never really overcomes evil, and since there is another way altogether to overcome it, the assertion that violence will never cease is untrue. Violence is diminishing, and clearly tending to disappear; though not, as is claimed by the defenders of the existing order, in consequence of the amelioration of those who live under an oppressive government (their condition really gets worse), but because the consciousness of mankind is becoming more clear. Hence even the wicked men who are in power are growing less and less wicked, and will at last become so good that they will be incapable of committing deeds of violence.
The reason why humanity marches forward is not because the inferior men, having gained possession of power, reform their subjects by arbitrary methods, as is claimed both by Conservatives and Revolutionists, but is due above all to the fact that mankind in general is steadily, and with an ever increasing appreciation, adopting the Christian life-conception. There is a phenomenon observable in human life in a manner analogous to that of boiling. Those who profess the social life-conception are always ambitious to rule, and struggle to attain power. In this struggle the most gross and cruel, the least Christian elements of society, bubble up, as it were, and rise, by reason of their violence, into the ruling or upper classes of society. But then is fulfilled what Christ prophesied: "Woe unto you that are rich! Woe unto you that are full! Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you!" (Luke vi. 24-26). The men who have attained power, and glory, and riches, and who have realized all their cherished aims, live to discover that all is vanity, and gladly return to their former estate. Charles V., Ivan the Terrible, Alexander I., having realized the evils of power and its futility, renounced it because they recognized it as a calamity, having lost all pleasure in the deeds of violence which they formerly enjoyed.
But it is not alone kings like Charles V. and Alexander I. who arrive at this disgust of power, but every man who has attained the object of his ambition. Not only the statesman, the general, the millionaire, the merchant, but every official who has gained the position for which he has longed this half score of years, every well-to-do peasant who has saved one or two hundred roubles, finds at last the same disillusion.
Not only individuals, but entire nations, mankind as a whole, have passed through this experience.
The attractions of power and all it brings – riches, honors, luxury – seem to men really worth struggling for only until they are won; for no sooner does a man hold them within his grasp than they manifest their own emptiness and gradually lose their charm, like clouds, lovely and picturesque in outline seen from afar, but no sooner is one enveloped in them than all their beauty vanishes.
Men who have obtained riches and power, those who have struggled for them, but more particularly those who have inherited them, cease to be greedy for power or cruel in its acquisition.
Having learned by experience, sometimes in one generation, sometimes in several, how utterly worthless are the fruits of violence, men abandon those vices acquired by the passion for riches and power, and growing more humane, they lose their positions, being crowded out by others who are less Christian and more wicked; whereupon they fall back into a stratum, which, though lower in the social scale, is higher in that of morality, thus increasing the mean level of Christian consciousness. But straightway, the worse, the rougher, and less Christian elements rise to the surface, and being subject to the same experience as their predecessors, after one or two generations these men, too, recognize the hollowness of violent ambitions, and, being penetrated with the spirit of Christianity, fall back into the ranks of the oppressed. These are in turn replaced by new oppressors, less despotic than the former, but rougher than those whom they oppress. So that although the authority is to all outward seeming unchanged, yet the number of those who have been driven by the exigencies of life to adopt the Christian life-conception increases with every change of rulers. They may be more harsh, more cruel, and less Christian than their subjects; but always men less and less violent replace their predecessors in authority.
Violence chooses its instruments from among the worst elements of society; men who gradually become leavened, and, softened and changed for the better, are returned into society.
Such is the process by means of which Christianity takes fuller possession of men day by day. Christianity enters into the consciousness of men in spite of the violence of power, and even owing to that violence.
The argument of the defenders of the State, that if power were abolished the wicked would tyrannize over the good, not only fails to prove that the domination of the wicked is a new thing to be dreaded, – as it exists already, – but proves, on the contrary, that the tyranny of the State, which allows the wicked to govern the good, is itself the real evil which we ought to eradicate, and which is constantly decreasing by the very nature of things.
"But if State violence is not to cease until the rulers have become so far Christianized that they will renounce it of their own accord and no others will be found to take their places, – if these things are coming to pass," say the defenders of the existing order, "when is it to happen? If 1800 years have passed, and still so many long to rule, it is wholly improbable that we shall soon behold this change, if it ever takes place at all.
"Even though there may be at present, as there always have been, certain individuals who would not rule if they could, who do not choose to benefit themselves in that way, still the number of those who do prefer to rule rather than to be ruled is so great that it is difficult to imagine a time when the number will be exhausted.
"In order to accomplish the conversion of all men, to induce each one to exchange the pagan for the Christian life-conception, voluntarily resigning riches and power, there being none left to profit by these, it would be necessary that not only all the rude, half-barbarous people, unfitted either to accept Christianity or follow its precepts, who are always to be found in every Christian community, should become Christians, but that all savage and non-Christian nations, which are still numerous, should also become Christian.
"Therefore were one to admit that the Christianizing process may at some future time embrace all humanity, we must still take into consideration the degree of progress that has been made in 1800 years, and realize that this can only happen after many centuries. Hence we need not for the present trouble ourselves about the overthrow of authority; all we have to do is to look to it that it is in the best hands."
Thus reply the partizans of the existing system. And this reasoning would be perfectly consistent, provided that the transition of men from one life-conception to another were only to be effected by the process of individual conversion; that is to say, that each man, through his personal experience, should realize the vanity of power, and apprehend Christian truth. This process is constantly going on, and in that way, one by one, men are converted to Christianity.
But men do not become converted to Christianity merely in this way; there is an exterior influence brought to bear which accelerates the process. The progression of mankind from one system of life to another is accomplished not only gradually, as the sand glides through the hour-glass, grain by grain, until all has run out, but rather as water which enters an immersed vessel, at first slowly, at one side, then, borne down by its weight, suddenly plunges, and at once fills completely.
And this is what happens in human communities during a change in their life-conception, which is equivalent to the change from one organization to another. It is only at first that men by degrees, one by one, accept the new truth and obey its dictates; but after it has been to a certain extent disseminated, it is accepted, not through intuition, and not by degrees, but generally and at once, and almost involuntarily.